elcome back, beginners, to our ongoing series which tries to show that cryptic clues are considerably less baffling than they tend to seem.

This time, it’s a device that you’re already familiar with from your non-crosswording life, but also one which you may not always realise you’re being asked to put into solving action.

Before we proceed, let’s reassure ourselves that cryptic clues typically offer no fewer than two ways to find the answer, in either order: a definition of it (indicated in bold in the examples that follow) and some wordplay.

More happily still, in a genuine puzzle environment you’re not dealing with each clue in brute isolation: you will have help from the letters of the other clues, giving you multiple ways in to each miniature puzzle. Fear not!

How does it work?

Cryptic clues will, on occasion, feature a number, either as a numeral like “4” or a word like, well, “four”.

After absorbing the advice below, your instinct will, rightly, be to swiftly translate that number into Roman numerals …

one = I

five = V

ten = X

fifty = L

... and so on, then to regard the letter or letters you’ve come up with as a likely part of the answer. As you do so, it’s important to put out of your mind any bewilderment at those Europeans and their mule-headed adherence to this ineffectual alternative to al-Andalusian numerals. For you, that baffling ambiguity is, typically for crosswording, transformed from ugly bug to beguiling feature.

... depicting GRACED using an implausibly heart-warming moment at the crease.

It’s not always that simple

Now then. A device isn’t going to be beloved of setters if it only has that one single interpretation, is it?

It’s time to ’fess that a number in a clue is equally like to refer to, well, another clue. That is to say, a “4” might mean that you should start mouthing “IV” to yourself, but it might just as well mean that the meaning of the answer to (or, I concede, the letters in the answer of) four across (or, I should add, four down) are going to provide your starting point.

Sorry. Here’s a good example, from Paul, from a puzzle in which 23 down is INDIA:

16ac Six abandoning support for members somewhere in 23 (4)[ remove Roman numeral for “six” from a synonym for “support for members”][ VIAGRA – VI ]

So, at one end of the clue, the numbers travel via Rome to become letters; at the other, the numbers send you off to another part of the grid and XXIII has nothing to do with the VIAGRA that is the answer.

Here’s another example, from Qaos, from a puzzle in which one down is CHIC:

14d 50% off 1 ice cream? (6-4)[ half of the answer to one down ][ half of CHIC ]

So Qaos is asking you to lop off half of CHIC, then work backwards to see that IC is one before 100, which is 99, which in its own way is an ice cream. And so you can take a moment to write NINETY-NINE into the grid, hyphenation per your discretion.

It won’t surprise you to learn that there is controversy over whether a “real Roman” would have represented 99 with an IC, or with XCIX. It’s a fun enough debate if you’re into that kind of thing, but for crosswording purposes, you’re entering a world in which IC simply is 99, IM simply is 999 – and the clues are the more elegant for it. Understandably so, since the English language has many more words containing IC than it does XCIXs.

Beyond that? Here, please, is surely not the place to examine the Listener’s penchant for the medieval Roman numerals for, god help us, 7, 11, 70, 80, 90, 150, 160 and so on. Get a copy of Chambers and godspeed. But I will mention a clue by Anax as a sample of another kind of willful mischief:

Oh, Anax. Indeed: what we call “six” was known by the Romans as “sex” and written “VI”. And that inconspicuous word “a” can, I grant you, mean “per” –in phrases like “10 times a day”. And so VIPER is, strictly speaking, a fair answer. And a wonderful solve.

Over to you

Newcomers, any questions? And seasoned solvers, any favourite examples to share? I have recently been deeply tickled by this, from a setter I take to be Sleuth:

15d Top Forty in Rome on radio (5)[ Roman numeral for “forty”, as you would hear it on the radio ][ soundalike for XL ]